Losers’ Payoff Is a One-Game Playoff

After six months and 162 games, the identity of the National League wild card was finally revealed Sunday in the final moments of the final inning.

It’s a joker.

Approximately one minute after the Chicago Cubs tripped on a shoelace here, the San Francisco Giants walked into a door in Colorado, so tonight they will meet in Chicago in a one-game, winner-takes-a-beating-from-Atlanta playoff.

To the victor goes the wild-card spot and a division series match with the Braves.

To the loser goes the ignominy of knowing that on Sunday, they were within a few outs of winning it outright. Both of them. At the same time.

Bring your own pies.

“After this season, they’re going to have to add an extra ‘wild,’ ” Cub reliever Rod Beck said. “It’s going to be the ‘wild, wild card.’ ”

The Cubs blew a two-run lead in the eighth inning before losing to the Houston Astros, 4-3, in the 11th inning.

The Giants blew a seven-run lead before losing to the Colorado Rockies, 9-8, on a ninth-inning homer by Neifi Perez.

“We had a real good chance to win it and didn’t . . . I’m sure the Giants are saying the same thing,” the Cubs’ Mark Grace said. “I guess that’s why we are the wild cards.”

Fitting, the most compelling part of a compelling afternoon here didn’t even occur during the game.

It began after Beck stood on the infield and watched Richard Hidalgo’s fly ball to center field score Carl Everett with the winning run.

“First thing I thought was, ‘Go Rockies,’ ” Beck said.

Then, walking up the runway into the clubhouse, he heard the strangest thing.

“It sounded like a bunch of people laughing and having a good time, which is unusual after a loss like this,” he said. “Then I came into the clubhouse and looked up at the TV . . .”

And there he was, Perez, rounding the bases, sending this thing back home to Chicago.

“My man Neifi,” Sammy Sosa said.

Relief swept through the small room like a sweet autumn rain.

“It was like, ‘Whoopee,’ ” shortstop Jeff Blauser said.

When asked what else they said, he smiled and added, “What would somebody on death row say? Somebody who has just gotten a reprieve?”

The Cubs and Giants finish the season with 89-73 records, the same as the Cleveland Indians, better than the Texas Rangers, so they aren’t awful teams.

But the weary Cubs played that way in the final week of the season, losing six of eight games, including blowing a seven-run lead in Milwaukee.

And the overachieving Giants played that way on Sunday, when they could have become the wild-card team if they had held the Rockies to less than seven runs in five innings.

To think, they both not only lost their games at about the same time, but also their momentum.

It happened in the eighth inning here, the fifth inning in Colorado, where the game began 30 minutes later.

While the hand-operated scoreboard in left field showed the Rockies scoring one, two, three, six runs against the Giants, the Cubs looked at their own game long enough to realize something like that was also happening here.

“Yeah, we certainly all watched the scoreboard,” Grace said. “Six outs, if we could have gotten just six outs, we would have been celebrating right now.”

The Astro comeback against a tiring Terry Mulholland--forced to stay in the game because of the Cubs’ hideous middle relief--began when Hidalgo lined a double that bounced over the glove of charging Jose Hernandez in left field.

Yes, Cub fans, Hernandez had just been moved there from shortstop for the same reason that Brant Brown was placed in left field just before his deadly error last week in Milwaukee.

Next time you see a Chicagoan, have a little fun, mention the words, defensive purposes.

One out later, Jeff Bagwell bounced a ball under the glove of diving third baseman Gary Gaetti for a single that scored Hidalgo.

Then with two out, Sean Berry hit a blooper that bounced between retreating shortstop Blauser and center fielder Lance Johnson, who should have grabbed it and thrown it home.

But Johnson didn’t move quick enough, so Blauser grabbed it and made an off-balance throw that landed halfway up the third-base line.

Bagwell, not the swiftest of men, scored all the way from first to tie the score.

“A game like this, you have to go for it,” Blauser said.

So it was that three innings later, Sosa--this day was so weird, he was not the big story--charged after Everett’s line drive into the right-field gap.

The ball hit the wall on the fly, bounced past Sosa in the other direction, and he wound up falling at the feet of his center fielder as Johnson threw it home.

Everett scored the winning run on Hidalgo’s fly ball one batter later.

“Only Superman could have caught that ball,” Sosa said.

Superman wasn’t here Sunday. He wasn’t in Colorado either, come to think of it.

So two imperfect teams meet today in what has been one of baseball’s perfect moments.

Bobby Thomson hit his home run in a regular season playoff. Bucky Dent hit his home run in a regular season playoff.

None of that quite sounds like this.

“One more day,” Grace said. “We throw on the hard hats, grab our lunch pails, and punch that clock one more time.”

The game begins at Wrigley Field at 7 p.m. locally, the same starting time as “Monday Night Football.”

Oh, the collisions, the tumbles, the chaos.

The football game could be pretty interesting too.

*

DODGER SEASON IN REVIEW

The problems are many and the answers are not easy as team enters an off-season of changes. C3

* DODGERS WIN FINALE

Chan Ho Park won his 15th game and Jeff Shaw saved his 48th as L.A. defeated Milwaukee, 2-1. C3

* ANGEL SEASON IN REVIEW

After a second-place finish, the players want Disney to open its pocketbook and sign free-agent help. C9

* ANGELS WIN FINALE

Jarrod Washburn gave up three hits and two runs in 6 2/3 innings in a 4-2 victory over the Oakland A’s. C9

* NATIONAL LEAGUE PLAYOFF CAPSULE: C4

* AMERICAN LEAGUE PLAYOFF CAPSULES: C8

* COVERAGE: C4-9